Piracy

[Thursday Next]

The way I see it going is that everyone will use always online DRM. You'll need a unique, entitled account that cannot have any other simultaneous logins to play any game. Some games will let you purchase the whole thing up front, with maybe some tacked on microtransactions (a la Diablo 3) others will be free to play charging you for resources or weapons or whatever like EA's Play4Free titles.

 

I think that we're approaching a critical mass of online connectivity where making everyone go online all the time is actually feasible. The people who are not able to stay connected 24/7 (or for as long as they are playing) will be left to catch up. Everyone will swallow it. Some noisy dissenters will threaten boycotts but will ultimately cave, especially when these dissenters are most likely those who are easily able to meet the requirement to be online all the time.

 

Then instead of people stealing games from companies, they will steal accounts from customers. Your games will get transferred to another account, your password will get changed and you will lose access to all your games while you go through a customer service experience so excruciating that you will long to be fed to a sarlacc. And then, once (if) you get your games back you will learn that the authentication servers for your favourite classic title have been taken down since you were the only person left that played it. Then you will wail and beat your chest and cry "Why!?! Oh why did I not listen to ThursdayNext when he was dropping sagacious pronouncements? Why did I continue in my piratey ways? Now I am forced to restart my town in Zynga's SweatshopVille. My WoW lvl 873 Dark Elf Rogue Mage is naked and weaponless and my Battlefield 9 stats have been reset! Woe!!! Woe is me!"

 

And I shall say. "Called it."

[TheMightyEthan]

But I don't pirate, and I'm still going to have to live in that dystopian future.

 

I actually think OnLive and similar services are the future of gaming. Too bad it's unplayable from my location due to latency.

[deanb]

That dystopian future will happen whether all piracy was to stop this moment or not. Content creators want control, and for some reason governments want to readily give them this control*. Games industry is a bit of a bitch with the DRM, but generally they've actually been pretty placid on the legal front unlike MPAA, BFI, RIAA, IFPI and their international counterparts. A large chunk of the powers given to media groups also tends to circumvent "innocent until proven guilty" which is a load of balls, especially given the exceedingly shakey evidence of IP addresses usually given.

 

Streaming for all media does seem to be the way to go, it provides benefits to both consumer and producer. Consumer gets a easily accessed mountain of content for a reasonable cost, and producer has a fair chance that consumers will sign up for this. But it means both sides ceding control to these new companies like Netflix, OnLive Spotify, etc. Something we're seeing content producers revolting against in US with Netflix n Hulu(and even giving net neutrality the finger in order to push their own services). The main part against it all though is it locks out countries and regions where the net isn't as speedy or accessible. My gran can't really buy films from Netflix to watch on her DVD player.

 

But as long as disc formats still exist, as long as user accesible PCs exist, then so will non-streaming, un-controlled distribution of content and games.

 

*http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120625/12333619468/eu-commissioner-reveals-he-will-simply-ignore-any-rejection-acta-european-parliament-next-week.shtml

[TheMightyEthan]

Content creators want control, and for some reason governments want to readily give them this control*.

 

That reason is called money.

[fuchikoma]

The way I see it going is that everyone will use always online DRM. You'll need a unique, entitled account that cannot have any other simultaneous logins to play any game. Some games will let you purchase the whole thing up front, with maybe some tacked on microtransactions (a la Diablo 3) others will be free to play charging you for resources or weapons or whatever like EA's Play4Free titles.

 

I think that we're approaching a critical mass of online connectivity where making everyone go online all the time is actually feasible. The people who are not able to stay connected 24/7 (or for as long as they are playing) will be left to catch up. Everyone will swallow it. Some noisy dissenters will threaten boycotts but will ultimately cave, especially when these dissenters are most likely those who are easily able to meet the requirement to be online all the time.

 

Then instead of people stealing games from companies, they will steal accounts from customers. Your games will get transferred to another account, your password will get changed and you will lose access to all your games while you go through a customer service experience so excruciating that you will long to be fed to a sarlacc. And then, once (if) you get your games back you will learn that the authentication servers for your favourite classic title have been taken down since you were the only person left that played it. Then you will wail and beat your chest and cry "Why!?! Oh why did I not listen to ThursdayNext when he was dropping sagacious pronouncements? Why did I continue in my piratey ways? Now I am forced to restart my town in Zynga's SweatshopVille. My WoW lvl 873 Dark Elf Rogue Mage is naked and weaponless and my Battlefield 9 stats have been reset! Woe!!! Woe is me!"

 

And I shall say. "Called it."

 

Pretty much... though I think that only looks at the really big budget games, or those from big studios. That's going to affect a huge number of people, but I wouldn't say quite everyone will cave. On the PC I've pretty much gotten used to life without them because with all the random DRM out there, it's just safer not to get involved with them at all. So I play a lot of indie/doujin games because they can't afford the licensing cost and consumer rejection of DRM. I still have some big name titles on consoles though since they're largely safe so far. When I'm offered special logins for EA or something I decline them. For titles that significantly suffer when servers are shut down like Demons Souls... I just steer clear altogether.

 

Also, I suspect this lockdown will come with an increasing tendency to sell games as a service - like that single player, offline game? Get it now for only $6.95 per month!

[Johnny]

The best part is that even though it's online-only, if you go to any popular torrent site, you'll find cracked releases of Diablo III.

For christ's sakes, people run private servers of World of Warcraft.

[Eleven]

It's off topic but is offline diablo 3 even possible? Or are you implying that the best part is even if they don't work you have those things?

[Johnny]

I haven't tried pirating Diablo 3 (I own the game), but word on the internet is that it works.

Took like two weeks for them to crack it though after release.

[Eleven]

Thanks! Hmmm. Maybe I'll do it and see. Kinda surprising though, with all the talk about generating stuff on the server side. It's very interesting.

[Mister Jack]

http://www.zdnet.com/acta-rejected-by-europe-leaving-copyright-treaty-near-dead-7000000255/

 

Aww yeah.

[deanb]

An "aww yeah" for EU sure, but as it notes there's still many nations yet to vote on it and lobbying groups seem to thing that these countries won't take the same "disappointing" route as EU has.

 

Also it's not fully dead in Europe, as noted at the bottom of the article there's some that still want to force it through regardless of this vote.

[Mister Jack]

Not dead perhaps, but it certainly diminishes its chances.

[deanb]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-08-01-lost-humanity-6-killing-pirates

 

And article on EG on the topic of "killing pirates". First step: Get rid of the term "pirate/piracy".

[Thursday Next]

"Piracy suggests villainy of some kind, when in truth all that punters are doing when taking something for free is "taking something for free". It's like lifting a leaflet, or taking one of those samples of cheese from Tesco's deli counter. It's what people do. There's no malice in it."

 

Except that you are taking something without permission, which is villainy of a kind.

 

The article seems to suggest that there should just be some sort of honesty box on the internet and that people should just pay whatever the hell they want. That's a nice idea for consumers, but it sucks for businesses and is not how the free market works. The price of an item should be a bi-lateral decision. The seller sets the price, the buyer chooses to buy or not. This continues until a price that the buyer and the seller are satisfied with is reached.

[MasterDex]

The article seems to suggest that there should just be some sort of honesty box on the internet and that people should just pay whatever the hell they want. That's a nice idea for consumers, but it sucks for businesses and is not how the free market works. The price of an item should be a bi-lateral decision. The seller sets the price, the buyer chooses to buy or not. This continues until a price that the buyer and the seller are satisfied with is reached.

 

You're completely right. In my experience, repairing PC's, I'd often work on an honour system because many customers were friends. You expect them to throw something your way but often times, they won't. Even when they say they will, there's been times when I've not received anything but a verbal thank you. If the honour system doesn't work on that small of a scale, it's hard to imagine it doing any better on a grand-scale.

 

I think a good solution to the problem of piracy - There'll always be piracy, it just doesn't have to be a problem - is to start selling games in more consumer friendly ways. Take Tribes: Ascend as an example. It's free to play and you can unlock the weapons and classes without paying, but give the devs some cash and you'll do so faster or get access to new voicepacks or skins. That's a sustainable model, supported with new maps added for no cost - like Team Fortress 2 in many ways. How about if EA/DICE offered three ways to buy the next BF4 - Campaign Edition, Multiplayer Edition, Complete Edition - The two previous versions would be half the cost of the latter. People like me will just pick up the MP edition and others will choose the campaign or complete editions. How about a humble bundle style name-your-own-price deal for a new game? Set a reasonable minimum payment and allow people to pay more if they want, using charity as a booster if you feel you need to, or offering a little something extra, Kickstarter style.

 

Just offering the consumer different paths other than buy expensive, wait for the sales/price drop or pirate could help a lot in reducing piracy figures. I have no sympathy for any publisher or developer that whines about their piracy figures instead of trying to reduce those numbers with intelligent, consumer-friendly methods.

Edited August 3, 2012 by MasterDex

[Thursday Next]

Those are all good ideas. I for one was pretty vocal against the inclusion of SP in BF3 anyway and I have never even touched it, an MP only version would have been great for me and my friends.

 

I'm also all for the minimum price humble bundle idea.

 

I think that the industry at the moment is trying a lot of different things to see what sticks. You've got WoW going free to play up to level 20. SWtOR free up to level 50. Battlefield Heroes and Play 4 Free going the MTX route and CoD and BF3 going for the Retail + Premium service model.

 

What is abundantly clear is that while a disc in a box is not going to completely disappear any time soon, that can now only be one part of your monetisation.Transferring 1's and 0's via different media is getting harder to do in a profitable way. Partly due to piracy. What is needed instead is a service model. Access to online servers, account entitlements for items be they vanity or performance based. Increased feature sets in peripheral services such as Battlelog (peripheral for the console version at least).

[TheMightyEthan]

From here.

 

And as I told FDS in another thread, I don't view piracy as a viable option for protest. Either I find the game worth playing despite whatever it was that pissed me off or I don't, and if it's worth playing then it's worth paying for, even if it means waiting for a reduced price at some point down the road. The one exception to this being ridiculous DRM, because since the pirate version obviously doesn't have it I'm not saying it's worth playing in spite of the problem, merely that it's worth playing in a version that lacks the problem.

 

Should we take this to the piracy thread? Because the big issue I see here is publishers vs. developers. I can like a developer, but abhor who they work for.

 

Then don't play the game. Or wait until it's cheap enough that you're willing to give them that token amount of support.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

When you buy a game, you support the publisher more so than the developer. Unlike in music, where you can go see the band live or buy merch, there doesn't exist an option to directly support the people who make the product.

[TheMightyEthan]

So if you don't want to support the publisher at all then just don't get the game at all. You have no right to have it and unlike the demo context there's not even an argument that it's fair use.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Who said I have a right to have it? I don't care the slightest bit about legality. Do you think the developers would be pissed off that someone is enjoying their game? Ideally, that is why developers make games, for themselves and others and not for money. The reality of course, is far different.

[TheMightyEthan]

Who said anything about legality?

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

You mentioned "right" and fair use.

[TheMightyEthan]

Moral right. I probably shouldn't have used "fair use" because it is a legal term, but really I meant the words in their plain meaning: use that is fair.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

If there was a way to support developers more directly I'd do it. Though the bigger issue is the influence publishers have on developers... it's not exactly a black and white thing. Personally, I don't think it's morally wrong, as I do buy plenty of games. I have no problem spending money on games.

 

As for the fair use thing... well that sounds like another argument entirely. Do you just mean pirating to demo and nothing more?

[Johnny]

if it's worth playing then it's worth paying for

 

You definitely have more money than me